Pate Vesely's remarks on DK:
Aww Stef, Thank you so much..... (none / 1)
.....for posting all the links. You saved me the trouble of doing it. I can see where some would think that these posts are "ugly". The truth is like that sometimes.
Let me start by saying publicly that my wife and I considered Andy a close personal friend for a long time. My wife sat with him in a bistro across the street from the California Secretary of State's office in Sacramento, wiring and sewing a small 'button hole' camera into his shirt, just before we demonstrated the 'Thompson hack' to various members of the VSPP, SoS's office, States Attorney's office and others, while I was in Kevin Shelley's board room setting up the cameras, computers, and a video projector for the demonstration. We still laugh at the absurdity of that scene as various politicians, lobbyists, and other assorted passers by looked on wondering who was about to get 'stung' across the street. Anyone who has ever hung out with him knew how much fun he was to be around.
My wife and I shared a lot of personal information with Andy that we don't normally share with strangers. We considered him a trusted friend.
That said, my trust in him started to erode well before the 2004 election. The e-mails, PMs, and phone calls I was getting on an almost daily basis were getting to sound more and more paranoid about Bev. So much so that I started to archive every contact I had with him because I sensed that something just wasn't right. In retrospect, I'm glad I did.
Andy was clearly affected by certain people who had parted ways with BBV.org and he was of the opinion that he should be the 'spokesperson' for the organization rather than Bev because of what was happening with those people on DU. I have several e-mails and PMs archived where he was quite open about his feelings on the matter. I just let him vent and didn't really comment much about it at the time. I figured it was just his opinion, he was entitled to it, and I didn't share it. No big deal.
My trust in him was strained to the max a couple of weeks before the 2004 elections when I received a tear filled phone call from him asking for my help. He told me he had just gotten off the phone with Mike 'Delmart' Vreeland, a shadowy character who had claimed to be a military intelligence officer that had foreknowledge of the 9/11 attack. He was on the run from US officials on a number of charges at the time. Here's some background on 'Mike'.
http://www.google.com/...If you look at the links on that search you'll notice that Mike is the stuff that "tin foil hatters" dreams are made from.
You can imagine my surprise when Andy called me in tears asking if I could arrange a three way call between him, myself, and 'Mike' in his jail cell! At the time I had basic 'no frills' Universal Lifeline phone service so I was not in a position to help as he requested. Andy then started to relay messages from 'Mike' to me. He told me this fantastic story about how 'Mike' was "shadowing terrorists who were going to set off four nuclear bombs, two each in each of the 'twin cities', in order to disrupt the election."
At that point my BS detector went off scale and I did everything in my power to convince Andy to NOT go public with such a 'tin foil hat' story. Andy was a paid investigator for BBV.org and the press was doing everything in their power to paint us as "conspiracy theorists" as it was. I knew that if he made these claims in public, and as a paid investigator for BBV.org, the press could have a field day with it and use it to try to discredit everything we were working on.
Andy repeatedly hung up on me during those calls because I wouldn't agree with his decision to go public with the story. He didn't care what damage it caused the organization, he had made up his mind that it was his civic duty to do it "just in case it's true".
At that point, it became apparent that nothing I could say was going to stop him so, as a friend who didn't want to see him make a fool of himself, I offered to help him break the details in a way that would give him 'plausible deniability'. He agreed that he would leave it to me to bring up the nuclear threat so there would be no proof that he had ever made that particular claim. This is all in the archives over at DU.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/...Needless to say, I lost a lot of the respect I had for Andy after this episode. Thankfully it didn't go much further than DU and a few other blogs, but his reckless disregard for the potential damage he could have caused to all of the hard work we had done up to that point made me realize that he could no longer be fully trusted.
You people like to talk about how Bev and BBV.org "discredit the movement". You seem to canonize someone like Andy who pulls stunts like this just before an election and demonize Bev every time she accomplishes something new. I don't get it.
Perhaps I should also mention Andy's appearance on MSNBC where he was desperately trying to prove that little Johnny Gosch, a child who disappeared many years ago, was in reality kidnapped as part of a Whitehouse child sex ring and later became a male prostitute turned presstitute named Jeff Gannon / Guckert. Andy went to the extreme of having that poor kid's mother dragged on television to demand a DNA test from Gannon based only on wild speculation on an Internet discussion board. Do you remember the results of that 'investigation'? I do.
http://www.google.com/...I'm fairly certain that episodes like this do more "harm to the movement" than anything Bev or Black Box Voting.org has done.
Some may see him as a 'Saint' who was all goodness and light and could do no wrong. I see him as a former friend whose trusting nature was exploited by some really evil people that managed to distract him from the good he was doing and set him up in order to discredit him.
I'm particularly glad that you posted the link to the Ida Briggs thread. That is another classic example of the things that Andy did that got him fired from BBV.org.
For those who don't know, Ida was responsible for the New Hampshire voter study, and helped make the recount in New Hampshire possible. Ida had talked to Bev previously on a several occasions but, by her own admission, she mostly communicated with Andy. I was the 'someone' she mentions that 'BBV' (Or more precisely, Andy) was going to send to help them in the recount.
I was well aware of the Green Party recount in New Hampshire and was pleasantly surprised when I received a call from Andy on November 24th 2004 asking me if I would be willing and able to go to NH for BBV.org and pick up the FOIA documents from the officials in the jurisdictions where the recount was to take place and help in the analysis of them. Andy asked me to send my contact information to Joan Krawitz at an e-mail address that he provided. I sent the following e-mail in response to her plea for help.
>Are you kidding? What time, where and when?
>
>Here's my contact info;
>
>Pat A. Vesely
>XXXX XXXX XXXXXXX Road
>Felton, California, 95018-XXXX
>
>Phone: XXX XXX-XXXX
>E-Mail: pavesely@pacbell.net
>
>I'm all yours! :)
On 11/25/04 at 8:11 AM I received an e-mail in response from Joan which read,
I thought you'd say that! The FOIA'd materials won't show up until at least Monday night ... and even then I doubt if we'll get all of them, but it wouldn't hurt for you to come for Monday's recount which continues on Tuesday if you're willing. Ida Briggs is running the show down there and she needs to talk with you about it. She's terrific and has great credentials. I'm calling her right now to give her your phone number. Also, I'm gonna cc this to you by email as well as PM. How's that?
Shortly thereafter I received a call from Ida who gave me the details of what was expected of my participation in the recount and retrieval of the FOIA documents for analysis. She told me that I was to purchase the tickets and I would be reimbursed when I got there. She seemed concerned about what I would be wearing and went into detail about how the Republicans that were fighting them were dressed and she asked that I be sure to wear a dark suit and a tie so I would have the proper look. She also warned me to dress really warm as it was freezing up there and I would be traveling around to pick up the FOIA requests. She told me that if I could not afford to purchase the tickets on my own to contact her and she would make the arrangements for me.
I then received an e-mail from Ida at a Yahoo address that was a 'forward' from Joan that read,
"Note: forwarded message attached.
Subject:
FOIA request and volunteer instructions for pickup.
From:
"Joan Krawitz" <jkrawitz@XXX.com>
Date:
Wed, 24 Nov 2004 15:50:20 -0600
To:
<idabriggs@XXXXX.com>, "Eleanor Lecain" <EMLECAIN@XXX.COM>, <laura@XXXXXXXXX.org>
The complete FOIA request from Black Box Voting comprises the last two pages.
Joan
Joan Krawitz
Executive Director, Help America Recount Fund
Co-founder, National Ballot Integrity Project
http://www.ballotintegrity.org This e-mail had an attachment that was in MS Word format on the proper way to retrieve the documents.
My wife and I then went out to go purchase a new suit and tie since I haven't owned one in years, and several new white dress shirts, a decent pair of dress shoes and a winter coat since I didn't have or need one here in central California. In all we spent several hundred dollars gearing up just for this event. When we got home we set about trying to buy a ticket to NH.
If you have ever tried to purchase 'last minute' tickets anywhere you're aware of just how expensive they are. If you fly somewhere with a return date that's less than a week later, ticket prices are astronomical. If you try to buy tickets at the last minute, with an 'open ended' return date during the holidays, grab your ankles and look out! My wife spent hours on line and on the phone to various travel agents trying to find a flight that I could afford to pay for. She finally found one that was just under $1000.00. Still just a little more than we could afford to pay for at the time. I sent an e-mail to Ida and cc'd Andy giving them the flight details and cost and requested that they purchase the tickets and to alert me when they had. I waited almost all night long and never received a response.
The following morning, I called Andy and asked him what was up and if he had heard anything back from Ida. He told me it was her show and that I would have to wait to hear from her. It was while I was waiting for the call that never came that I started to think about the possible 'conflict of interest' for me to travel at their expense for a partisan recount while representing a 'non partisan, non profit' organization and I started to wonder what limits it might place on my participation. I called Andy one last time and asked him to call Ida or Joan to find out what was happening and I asked him about the possible conflict and if it would be better if BBV.org just paid for the tickets. He got somewhat annoyed by the question and said he'd look into it and get back to me. He never did.
After several hours of waiting and wondering I called Bev on her cell phone to ask her what she thought. That apparently was the first that she had heard that Andy was arranging this and she let me know, in no uncertain terms, that it would be a breach of our charter for me to participate in a partisan recount effort at their expense while representing BBV.org. That was the last I heard from anyone involved in it. That is until Ida's post about it. I have not heard a word back from her since the day I asked that she arrange to pay for the tickets.
I'm rather surprised that anyone would dredge that link up since, in the end IIRC, that was the hand count that matched the machine totals and is being used to 'prove' that the machines are reliable and that they count properly. In hindsight, I'm kind of relieved I wasn't a part of it. Nothing I could have done there would have changed how that turned out.
I'll stop back later to go into some detail about the Randi Rhodes and Keith Olberman BS but before I go let me give you two hints. One is that I was intimately involved in that whole sorry affair when Randi attacked Bev on air. The hint is that the producers at AAR yanked that portion of Randi's program from their archive for a very good reason.
The second hint is that KO's anger at Bev for the hundreds of e-mails and phone calls he received was totally misdirected. Bev never asked anyone to harass him into having her on and she had not asked anyone to demand that she appear and that the video be aired. There was way too much going on at the time for her to just drop what she was doing in order for her to reschedule her original appearance that was canceled.
Keith had his shot and his producers blew it.
More later, I have real election reform work to do at the moment.
Pat A. Vesely ;-)
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